Day 38 Thursday June 11, 2009

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Day 38 Thursday June 11, 2009

The streets all around the city are chocked full of tailor shops and all have little yappy dogs to guard. I was close to eliminating the one across the street from our hotel a few times...hehe. Rented the bicycles again today and headed down to the streets by the river to check out several museums and such. Our first stop was the Catonese Assembly Hall that ws originally founded for community meetins and later became a temple to worship Thien Hau, from the Fujian Province in China. (Info from Lonely Planet) There were some very eloborate decorations in that place. Next stop, museum of Folk Culture and then to the "Old House of Tan Ky" which is a preserved house from the 19th century and once belonged to a Vietnamese merchant. You can def see the Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese influences all exquisitely melded together in the decor. This house is privately owned and has been in the family for 7 generations! (History tid bit from Lonely Planet). Since they are close to the river the house gets flooded every year during the rainy season and they have to move everything to the second floor of the house. Some of the flood levels are above our heads. We also bought a coin necklace with our Chinese/Vietnamese zodiac sign on them. WE biked another 5K and lounged on the beach for awhile until all the chaos of some locals having some kind of competition was overswhelming us. It was funny to see 5 grown men doing the catepillar crawl down to the beach and into the ocean. I went into the water and saw 3 jelly fish eyeballing me and I took off running back onto the beach (not a fan of the jelly fish). Plus I have to many scabs on my legs already from bicycle wreck/bug bites/crappy razors. We went back to the hotel pool (no jelly fish) to cool down before heading to "Good Morning Vietnam" restaurant that has the best Italian food by an Italian chef. I had the Penne pasta and some absolutley amazing chocolate mouse that was so rich I couldn't finish it. What a sin!

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